September 2013

WORD FROM THEDEAN’S OFFICE

A VERY PROUD moment for the faculty was the NMMU Teaching, Research and Engagement Awards evening. Held as an acknowledgement of the ex-cellence of the academic staff at NMMU, and recognition of those who have done outstanding work. We did sort of take a large proportion of the awards!

The awards went to:

• NMMU Distinguished Teacher Award: Dr Logan Athiemoolam [This award is conferred for a period of 5 years!]• NMMU Engagement Award: Prof Paul Webb• NMMU Research Excellence Award: Prof Naydene de Lange• Faculty of Education Excellent Teacher of the Year Award: Dr Kathija Adam• Faculty of Education Emerging Excellent Teacher of the Year Award: Dr Deidre Geduld• Faculty of Education Researcher of the Year Award: • Prof Naydene de Lange• Faculty of Education Emerging Research of the Year Award: Dr Nokhanyo Mayaba

It is Spring! Time to wonder anew at the way nature and life recycles and renews itself in the most glorious way – with many lessons for our species. Another hard term drew to a close, with students going on Spring Recess week, and staff got to take a bit of breather from lectures and school visits.

A warm welcome to Dr Dave Edley, who has joined us in the place of Prof Dalene Swanson. Dr Edley brings a wealth of ex-perience having been SG of the Education Department in the province, and knows the schooling system inside out – knowledge andexperiencethatwewillfindveryusefulin all our various programmes and interac-tions in the Faculty.

Our curriculum renewal work continues, with all teams working hard to provide both the best renewed conceptualisation of the B.Eds, PGCE, Honours and new PGDE programmes. Dr Edley, in collabora-tion with Mr Nofemele and Prof Delport, have had a hard look at the problematic Teaching Practice (TP) component of our programmes. We are in the process of re-thinking how to redesign this component, both for the new programmes, but also for more immediate revision of the TP as from next year. Discussion forums are being set up to get the views of different stakehold-ers to test some of the proposals which are emerging.

I also met and discussed a variety of topics with the various programmes’ student reps. It is important to us to have open communi-cation channels, and hear students’ voices coming through clearly at many different levels in the faculty. Warmest Wishes Denise Zinn

NMMU Teaching, Research and Engagement Awards

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Photographed from left to right is: Prof Paul Webb, Prof Naydene De Lange, Dr Kathija Adam, The Dean Prof Denise Zinn, Dr Logan Athiemoolam, Prof Alette Delport, Dr Nokhanyo Mayaba and Dr Deidre Geduld.

September 2013 Page 2

Prof Nonnie Botha and Mrs Carol Poisat visited Gothenburg under the auspices of the Global Uni-versity Project from 7 – 15 September 2013. The project aims at further developing and strength-ening links between the NMMU and the Goth-enburg University and is headed by Prof Lars Gunnarsson and Dr Kerstin von Bromssen. The object of Prof Botha’s visit was to explore some dimensions of Master’s and Doctoral educa-tion in the Faculty of Education at GU, thus iden-tifying possible best practices that could enhance this area in the Faculty of Education at the NMMU.

Mrs Poisat visited the university as part of the Ad-ministrator Exchange within the Global University cooperation between the two universities and fo-cused on the administration of Masters and Doc-toral Programs and included several meetings with people responsible for these activities in the Faculty of Education and at other parts of the university.

One of the highlights of their visit was attending the defence of a doctoral thesis. This visit brought to them many new insights on the master’s and doctoral programmes. Some of these might help to address some challenges experienced in these areas in our Faculty, or they might enhance existing practices.

The doctoral defence. The opponent (left) uses a power point slide to explain the context of her question to the doctoral candi-date (right). Some of the members of the evaluation committee are visible towards the left front of the audience.

Carol and Nonnie in front of the Pedagogen (Faculty of Education building)

Global University Project Visit Gothenburg

Dear colleagues

Thank you for the really lovely farewell tea on Wednesday, which I really enjoyed.

Thank you, Eileen, for your caring, thoughtful speech, and Paul, for your kind words. Thank you, Carol, for all your dedicated efforts to prepare everything and make it so nice, and for your kind words too.

Thank you for the lovely gift that I will enjoy wear-ing when I am in the UK, the beautiful flowers, and the delicious eats. It was wonderful!

Thank you to everyone who could attend, and to those who were unable to but sent kind emails. I have respected and appreciated your friendship, love and support,and I thank you for this.

I wish you the best for a happy and fulfilling future. Do stay in touch.

Sala kakuhle, lekker bly, stay well!Dalene

The keynote address at the truly splendid Awards Evening was delivered by Mr Ahmed Essop, CEO of the CHE. He emphasised the importance of the core function of Teaching, as the foundation for success in the other ‘missions’ and domains of higher education’s work. Yet, this often is overshadowed by the focus in many institutions on acknowledging and encouraging research excellence mainly. The critical issue of how we conceptualise our curricular content, our pedagogies, our assessment practices, the integration of our engagement activities, and the overall coher-ence of our curricula for student success is going to be under the spotlight a lot more than in the past, so our curriculum renewal work is exactly where we should be focussing our attention!

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September 2013 Page 3

Goodbye

UNAKO this year is hosting its second annual spelling bee competition for grade 12’s, 2 (Wednesday) October 2013, at the Missionvale Campus Indoor Sport Centre (NMMU) from 9am till 5pm. There are 65 high schools across metro located in the townships areas invited to take part; each school is going to be represented by two learners who have won the internal- school spelling bee.

BRIEFS

Annually, Peer Helping and Student Counselling, Career and Develop-ment Centre (SCCDC) host a 4.5km breakfast run to promote wellness among students and staff at NMMU. This year, the race was held on South campus, runners taking off from the Xanadu/Melody (XM) Club-house to the Sports centre and up entrance of the Grysbok trail and back, past the Security centre up to the Rag Farm and back to XM Clubhouse.

The day was mild and good for running for all age groups. There were approximately… participants from the NMMU community and learn-ers from nearby schools. Among those who were “up for a Healthy Chal-lenge” were six of the Faculty of Education’s staff and postgraduate stu-dents Dr Logan Athiemoolan, Dr Mary Grace Villanueva, Dr Kay Yang, Kholisa Papu, Brendaline Plaatjies and Carmelita Cornelius. Mary Grace’s daughter, Emerson and her friend also took part in this race.

Dr Athiemoolan made the faculty proud when he won one of the two priz-es for ‘mature’ runners, finishing before Lungsi Ntlokwana of SCCDC.

The number of FoE members and their children participating in this race confirm the ‘dynamic community of teachers, leaders and schol-ars’ that this faculty seeks to curve. Prof Sylvan Blignaut, Prof Den-ise Dean, Jackie Hay, Dalene Botha, Tash Dolley and other facul-ty members also participated in the Human Race, to celebrate our common humanity as people of different backgrounds, creed and colour.

Up for a Healthy

Challenge

Brea

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Run_

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Photographed at the Human Race event from left to right is: Mr Alan Zinn, Tash Dolley, Sherwin King and Prof Denise Zinn.

The

Human

RaceDr Mayaba has had another co-authored arti-cle, with her as Lead Author, published in an accredited journal. EASA has also selected her for their Postgraduate Medal of Honour, for her doctoral work. Well done of these ad-ditional achievements, Nokhanyo!

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Lunch with the DeanFaculty of Education Students Reps

Thepastmonthwasfilledwithcelebration,ashardworkdoneby so many people was acknowledged in public celebrations!

Wednesday the 4th of September was ‘Secretaries’ Day’, which we have now chosen to celebrate annually with a special event for all the administrative assistants in the Faculty, to say thank you to them for the work they do.

AwonderfullunchtogetherattheKelwayconfirmedthespiritofcamaraderie that exists amongst our administrative staff in the various schools and centres, and we were happy to extend that collegiality to the administrative staff at CANRAD. A lovely little African violet gift symbolised both the heartfelt gratitude for the work the administrators do, as well as the thanks we give for the start of Spring, and the renewal of energy in all living systems.

‘Secretaries Day’Principals undergo ICT Skills Training

Information and Communication Technology

Since August 2012, the principals of the Manyano Schools Network started a skills program aimed at im-proving their communication ability using ICT.

Participants started by learning the basics of how a computer works, followed by keyboard and mouse skills.

Internet browsing and the creation of email accounts foreachprincipal followed.Formany itwas thefirsttime to send and receive an email.

The training continues this year with topics including the use of a data projector, how to scan and manipu-late images and documents as well as using a digital camera.

The overall aim is to get the principals to adopt the ef-fectiveuseofICTandtobecomeconfidentcomputerend users.

Apart from some stiff fingers at the start the partici-pants were eager to get over their “phobia” for computers.

By: Kholisa Papu

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BHP BillitonCertificate Ceremony

CCS-Manyano SGB Capacitation Programme

Language teachers who were part of the recently im-plemented BHP Billiton sponsored project received recognition of their attendance and completion of the project tasks at a gathering held on Missionvale Campus on August 28, 2013. The project was imple-mented by the School for Educational Research and Engagement (SERE) in the Faculty of Education.

The project was established to improve the teaching of science, mathematics and language & literacy in primary schools in the Uitenhage district of the East-ern Cape province. Language teachers in the pro-gramme worked on strategies to improve the teaching of both reading and writing, from Foundation Phase to Senior Phase. The languages focused on were Afri-kaans, IsiXhosa and English.

As part of the programme, the teachers attended workshops, they were visited in class, and later, asked to make presentations relating to their use of strat-egies to teach writing. All participating schools, from Uitenhage, Despatch and Rocklands, were selected by Circuit managers from the Uitenhage District Of-ficeof theDepartmentofEducation,whowerealsopartners in the project.

On 7 September 2013, the Centre for the Community School (CCS) hosted a second School Governing Body (SGB) train-ing/workshop at Missionvale Campus. This workshop forms part of a going SGB capacitation programme developed by Mr A.A. Jindela of the Centre for the Community Schools.

Fourteen Manyano Schools (SGBs) gathered together in Missionvale Campus – CCS for the second SGB training/workshop aimed to build the leadership capacity of SGBs to support the effective functioning of community schools and take action in support of school improvement and the devel-opment of their communities.

To deepen the understanding of the active roles that SGB members must play in school governance. Also to empower them with interpersonal skills and practical knowledge on roles and responsibilities necessary to govern their schools effectively. Most of all, to support SGB members in identifying and addressing the challenges that hinder them in their roles and responsibilities.